Batman Forever

Pros: Good cast. Plot had potential.
Cons: Movie turned corny and campy. Strange changes made.

Batman had been a popular comic book character for decades so it wasn’t surprising when Tim Burton made B atman in 1989 and followed it with B atman Returns in 1992. The ...

Pros: Val Kilmer fills the bat suit well
Cons: Joel Schumacher on the bat franchise, nipples on the bat suit?

The era of the Tim Burton Batman ended after the first two movies. Burton’s outlook on Batman brought a renewed interest in the character especially when he brought him back to his dark roots. But along the way Burton’s world also included ...

Pros: Kidman's a honey, Jim Carrey can be entertaining and innovative...
Cons: ...or he can just be tiring. BAD interpretation of Batman, Robin, and the villains

The answer: almost always.

Maybe there's something about the medium of comic books that doesn't translate well to the big screen. How, then, do we explain the successes of the comic book movies that DO work? Like "Superman," the first two...

Pros: Jim Carrey is hilarious as the Riddler, and Chris O'Donnell isn't all that bad
Cons: Script, editing, special effects, directing, everyone else's acting...you name it

"Your entrance was good, his was better. The difference...showmanship." Yep, it was this simple two-sentence structure that sent me on my voyage into viewing one of the worst superhero movies ever created. My brother and I have a tendency to toss movie...

Pros: Michael Gough, some of the music
Cons: Acting, direction, design.

There are so many reasons to hate the third installment of the modern Batman films, it's truly bewildering. But you can boil the whole sorry saga down to this: the first two films, directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton, rescued the comic ...

Pros: Great visuals, fun, entertaining, sinister villains, Kilmer's a great Bruce Wayne
Cons: O'Donnell's Robin, boring love interest, lack of depth in villains, cheesy

Not only does Batman Forever dazzles with spectacular visuals and a candy-colored Gotham City and it successfully entraps the audience from scene one all the way to the suspenseful climax. The film is like a ride on the Batmobile. Watching Batman Forever ...

Pros: Carrey is okay.
Cons: Plot-holes aplenty, a dumb script and zero atmosphere.

How the mighty have fallen. Not, of course, that Joel Schumacher could ever in his career have been described as “mighty”. But then again, the phrase “how the intermittently quite good have fallen” doesn’t make for much of a point, does it? Anyway, I...

Pros: Nicole Kidman looks great
Cons: Poorly directed

Batman Forever is a cartoon. It doesn’t quite mimic a cartoon the way Batman and Robin does, putting cartoon sounds into scenes, and there aren’t any bubbles reading “Oof!” or “Pow!” like there were on the old ...

Pros: Val Kilmer is convincing as Bruce Wayne and Batman, Moments of concept, Good two-disc version.
Cons: Overbearing soundtrack, Jim Carrey, Awkward use of Tommy Lee Jones.

In the process of combining our DVD collections, my partner and I have found interesting overlaps and a huge number of differences in our tastes. So, for example, when it comes to the "Batman" franchise, neither of us have Tim Burton's original ...

Pros: Interestingly designed.
Cons: Even more scattershot than "Batman Returns."

By the time this, the third "Batman" film in Warner Bros. 1990s series, came to be, the concept of comic-book-based multimedia franchises had reached a sort of zenith. Every major studio was still busy trying to turn any superhero-related concept they...

Pros: decent Robin treatment, TL Jones, nice DVD
Cons: lost the gothic realism of the first 2, poor designs, poor characters

The third Batman movie marks the first real break in continuity. There’s a different director, different Batman, different design, and different style. Whereas the first two are dark with an eye towards realism, this one is more like a newsstand ...

Pros: Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman
Cons: silly and mindless, Chris O'Donnell

This was the third movie in the fantasy-adventure series of movies based on the Marvel comic book superhero. The series felt like it was going to go on forever; fortunately it didn't. The first of the series was a lot of fun. The second one was...

Pros: Big cast, it looks cool
Cons: Let's begin with the script and move on from there...

I felt that Batman Forever was the beginning of the end for the Batman franchise in a downward spiral of ever more important marketing campaigns, one liners and big names. If anything, Batman Forever to me is a symbol of the almighty franchise run amok ...

Pros: Great acting from Jones and O'Conner; Kidman was a nice bonus
Cons: Left the real story line to create its own

What do you get when you take Tim Burton out of the director’s seat of a major motion picture series? A severely mixed up third Batman movie. At least Warner Brothers had the common sense to keep Mr. Burton on as producer. Boasting a strong cast, this...

Pros: Uh, um, uh, well... there was something... maybe... It's supposedly about Batman?
Cons: Well, now. No darkness, no insanity, no Batman (maybe), no plot, no style.

The terrifying experience of watching this movie inflicted itself upon me on Sunday, July 16, 2000. I wrote notes about it, and that's a good thing considering I've been blessed with largely forgetting what atrocities I beheld.

Before I start...